Coincidentally, “The Urbanist Agenda” just did an episode on this sort of thing. They were talking about community action groups in Canada and the US who have been conducting “guerrilla” actions in their home cities. From repainting roads to add bike lanes to installing flexiposts right into the asphalt to calm traffic. They talk about the effectiveness of different tactics and how to find similar groups in your own area.
The Urbanist Agenda: What to do When Your City Won’t Fix Things (with Bike Curious)
Episode webpage: https://art19.com/shows/the-urbanist-agenda
Hello, fellow AntennaPod user.
Also on Nebula if you have a subscription.
What’s the deal with podcasts on Nebula? I use it heavily for video, but quite like using AntennaPod for podcasts. Do I have to use the Nebula app for podcasts, or is there a way to use something else?
I watched the news report and the anchor at the end asked “what do these people want the city to do?” As if she wasn’t even watching the damn report. Why not ask the question “when will the city and the police do their job?”
Yeah that frustrated me too, like it’s their job. There are civil engineers that are paid by the city to look into this exact thing. Install a roundabout. Put up an impassable median, put in protected bike lanes, whatever. The people PAID THROUGH OUR TAX DOLLARS, and elected by OUR VOTES, should listen and act when an entire community feels so threatened that they end up doing shit like this. Unreal.
Good on them doing it themself.
They had a similar issue in Detroit with reckless drivers and racing. The neighborhoods literally poured their own speed bumps and it worked! The city didn’t go and remove them all, they instead went and replaced the home version with a real one. This is how Oakland should respond but as a former Ca resident the leaders of Oakland always seemed to fuck over their city
Speed bumps are the worst solution. You designed your road wrong, fix the damn design instead.
The problem is the roads are already there. Like sure we could redevelop the entire area over decades but we could also add some speed bumps like next week while we get around to the hard work.
The Netherlands did it over the course of a few decades, probably less than 20 years. You’d be surprised how fast things go since bicycle infrastructure is so dirt cheap in comparison to car infrastructure.
The next point is that what you’re saying is what you’ve been doing for decades, but nobody goes and actually fixes the issues at hand. I think it’s a cultural difference there too; in the Netherlands they constantly upgrade and change their infrastructure to make it all better whereas in the US, well, once a road is there it’ll better stay there for the next 50 years or so or maybe we’ll patch a little.
They continously monitor all roads as well. If an intersection has more accidents than normal, it gets scrapped, redesigned and rebuilt safer. Usually it gets upgraded to much safer roundabout. Speeds get lowered. In Canada or the US you’ll be lucky if a stop sign is placed, wow!
In my town in the Netherlands they lowered speeds throughout the city to from 50 to 30 kph, about 20mph. With most interactions now being roundabouts though, I can move faster there by car than I can here at home in Vancouver where speeds vary between 50 and 80 and mostly stopping at stop signs and traffic lights. Hell, anything under 5 miles, 8 kilometers, I can do faster by bike in the Netherlands than by car here in Canada. The Netherlands does what works.
If you keep placing speed bumps, you’ll never get anywhere.
Ok, the road is too straight and wide: difficult to for pedestrians and an invitation to speeding.
It’s interesting there is at least some parking on the side plus a center turn lane. So ….
- bump outs at each intersection to narrow the road and setting aside a parking lane. Traffic will slow because the bottleneck and pedestrians will be more visible and have a shorter crossing.
- The idiots called the center turn lane a median so make it so, partway. Instead of one continuous wide open turn lane, a raised median with cutouts for turn lanes. Now no one can drive there so you’re cutting dangerous driving, but you still have turn lanes. You constricted the road more so cars go slower. At this point you only have one driving lane in each direction.
Seems easy enough to make a noticeable difference with less effort. However, if you wanted to redevelop, there’s room to go for protected bike lanes and roundabouts (actual roundabouts with signs and painted lines, not just obstacles in the street.
And yes, speed bumps are the worst choice.
Detroit doesn’t have the funds or capable police to stop these things. The bumps stopped the neighborhood racing and population in these areas praise them.
Make Smaller roads.
Develop bicycle infrastructure.
Look at how the Netherlands does it and copy that, seriously
As a European its just insane how wide these streets are.
Did they want to build a highway or a neigborhood street?
US street designers and their bosses seriously need to get this “wider=better” mentality out of their head. Its no wonder people are driving this fast when the streets are this wide, its because it feels slow.
Its also bad in other ways: wasted money, needlessly destroyed nature, increased urban heat island effect and increased flooding risk because its sealed.
This particular street is wider because it once had trolley tracks running down the middle, before the Key System was ripped out in 1958 by General Motors.
Not Just Bikes just put up a video about how fire-fighters and their trucks fight for wider roads while having larger trucks than the rest of the world. Perfect timing there.
we have this issue on my street: we can’t get speed bumps because it’s an access point for the local fire department, and apparently they can only navigate the wide-low speed bumps (that do little to slow down traffic because people just drive 50mph over them).
it’s ridiculous. we’re on a one-car-wide side lane so traffic routinely snarls to a stop as people decide it’s their god-given turn to go now and honk and gesticulate instead of letting everyone get on with their lives. and when it’s not jammed with that bullshit, people are flying down the street (kids living in every house down both sides). Fucking nutbags.
Maybe their dicks shrink even more and they need even bigger yank tanks. Better plan ahead
💖tactical urbanism💖
My city has tried to co-opt that term to mean (relatively) quick and cheap projects led (and paid for) by the community, but with city approval. On one hand, it’s better than nothing, but on the other hand, the permitting still takes like a year and so it feels more like a half-assed government project than a legitimized community project.
I can’t decide whether to be pissed off about them calling it “tactical urbanism” or to just let them have the term and call actual unsanctioned improvements “guerilla urbanism” or something instead.
Something similar happened in my city on the east coast.
Small and quiet street had people flying through it as a shortcut. Residents built a wall on one end turning it into a dead end street.
The city tore down the barrier and promptly put up a sidewalk to make it permanent.
“Implement basic traffic calming measures or draw 25”
I had to look up with these side shows are that the article mentions. I’ve never been to California. Anyway it’s a stupid as it sounds.
He probably drives a car.
I drive a car and think neighborhood speed calming methods are A-OK.
I drive, bicycle and walk, and think there’s a better way to safely do all three in this huge space, but not by throwing shit in the road
Shit? Sure.
Official things, like flexi sticks? Yes
